Developments have been made in the area of perpendicular magnetic recording media, with much of them focusing on increasing the recording density of the magnetic recording media by decreasing the bit error rate. A lower bit error rate can be achieved by decreasing the transition noise between adjacent bits, and the transition noise in turn can be decreased by increasing the magnetic decoupling between grains. Grains that are decoupled and magnetically isolated from one another can switch independently and may allow the media to form finer and narrower transitions. Therefore, it would be beneficial to the improvement of perpendicular recording media to magnetically decouple the magnetic grains of the magnetic layer of a magnetic recording medium.